This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference. Communicate OER handed over efforts to the now defunct WikiProject Open. See the archived online WIKISOO class for more on learning to edit Wikipedia yourself. It was last substantively updated in 2014.
This is a quick but substantive exercise, designed to help people with expertise about open educational resources (OER) or related topics learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. It is part of the Communicate OER project.
This exercise will walk you through posting a review of an existing Wikipedia article, with specific suggestions for improvement. (You won't be directly editing the Wikipedia article in this exercise, so it should be quick and painless!) The purpose is to help you get started with Wikipedia editing, and to start a discussion in your area of expertise that will help the Wikipedia community improve the article.
By following these instructions, you will be making a meaningful contribution to Wikipedia! The input of people with subject matter expertise can be very scarce on Wikipedia; and editors often only make a small edit here or there, rather than looking at an article as a whole. By providing your perspective on a whole article, you will be making a valuable contribution to the task of improving it over time -- even if the results are not immediately apparent. Thank you for taking this on -- your contribution is greatly appreciated.
You should be able to complete these steps in about 20 minutes.
Note about conflict of interest (COI): Are you concerned about the ethics of working on something to which you have a close connection? Don't worry! This exercise is specifically designed to adhere to the two most important principles of working under a COI: (1) disclosing your connection to the subject, and (2) seeking consensus through discussion, rather than changing an article directly. If you continue to work with Communicate OER -- and we hope you will -- we will explore in more depth how to deal with a COI in an ethical and effective way. But for now, no need to worry about it.
Getting started
Select a Wikipedia education article in your area of expertise. (See the "Content" tab above for some suggestions)
Read the article and take some notes about how it should be improved.
Do your suggestions include adding new content? Wikipedia thrives on high quality, independent sources. Find a high-quality source that supports the information you'd like to see added. Review articles and secondary sources are ideal; they need not be published online to be valid, but if they are, a link is helpful. For primary sources, try the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
Log in to your Wikipedia account (Click here if you don't have an account yet.)
Copy the review template in the blue section below:
I am a (student/staff worker/professor/researcher/administrator) at (school or institution).
I am reviewing this article according to the instructions at [[WP:Communicate OER]].
I suggest changing the article in the following ways:
I think that this article could be improved by adding this statement:
This reference supports the above statement:
(Major identifiers like title, author and journal, ISBN or other identifying #'s are usually sufficient. Note that internal URLs from your institution university are not usually viewable by others.)
Thank you for your attention. ~~~~
With the above on your clipboard, click "Talk" at the top menu of the article you are reviewing. This is the page where other editors discuss that article.
Click the "New section" tab at the top of the Talk page.
In the "Subject/headline" box, type "My review of this article"
In the big box below that, paste the text you just copied.
Customize that text, filling in your opinions, contribution, and source. Delete or modify as you see fit, this is not a rigid format!
In the "Edit summary" box below the editing window, type "posting article review".
Click the "Save page" button.
You have just posted a suggestion for improving an article. Congratulations! Now, alert the rest of us in the Communicate OER project about your review; this will help us keep track of what's going on, and increase the chances that somebody will take action based on your review:
In the big box below that, type "I just posted a review of [[Name of your article]]. Please take a look! -~~~~" (the squiggly lines at the end will automatically turn into a signature.) Replace "name of your article" with the name of the article you reviewed.
Click the "Save page" button.
Thank you for getting involved! Please see here for some further steps you could take. We look forward to working with you as you explore working with Wikipedia!
